Poké Radar
This page describes the Poké Radar, a Key Item that allows the player to encounter the same wild Pokémon species in a row with an increased chance of them being shiny. The Poké Radar The Poké Radar can only be used while standing in tall grass. When used, the Poké Radar begins an encounter chain. Up to four grass patches near the player are randomly chosen, and they rustle. When stepping on a rustling grass patch, there will be a wild encounter. After that battle, different nearby grass patches are randomly chosen to rustle. These rustling patches are likely to contain the same species, at the same level, as encountered in the first rustling patch. A counter is also started, which increases each time you battle the same species in a rustling grass patch, and the chances of the encountered Pokémon being shiny gets higher as the counter increases. This is known as chaining. Chaining can be interrupted and cancelled by doing any of the following: * Leaving the current map. * Stepping out of the tall grass. * Mounting a bicycle. * Ending a chain encounter in any way other than capturing or defeating the chained Pokémon. * Having a wild encounter while not in one of the rustling grass patches. * Encountering a different Pokémon. * Stepping into rustling grass within 4 steps of a previous wild encounter. * Quitting the game. While chaining, there is a chance that each wild encounter in rustling grass will not be part of the chain, and will instead cancel the chain (even if it happens to be the same species as the species being chained). The closer the rustling grass patch is to the player when it rustles, the higher the chance that it will not be part of the chain. Also, the shorter the chain, the higher the chance of a non-chain encounter. Having said this, the minimum chance for continuing the chain each time is 86%. Once a chain has been cancelled, the player needs to walk 50 steps to recharge the Poké Radar before it can be used again. The Repel items do not affect encounters in rustling patches of grass. They are usually used to make sure that the chain isn't accidentally broken by a regular wild encounter while trying to get to the next rustling grass patch. There are three kinds of grass rustle that can happen: * A regular rustle. * A vigorous rustle. This is the only kind of rustling grass that can contain Poké Radar-exclusive Pokémon. There is a 25% chance that a rustling grass patch will rustle vigorously instead. * A shining rustle. A shiny Pokémon is guaranteed to be in this patch. The three kinds of rustling have different animations. Chaining numbers The chain count starts at 0 when the Poké Radar is used, and can go up to 40. Further chain encounters can occur, but they will not increase the chain count. The probability of continuing the chain each time is increased by (chain length/4)%, rounded down. At a maximum chain length of 40, the minimum chance for continuing the chain each time is 98% (and as mentioned, this can also be increased by going to a more distant rustling grass patch). While chaining, the odds of a chained Pokémon being shiny start at the usual likelihood (1/8192 or ~0.012% by default), and rise to about 1/200 (0.5% chance). This final chance is always the same, regardless of the initial shiny chance, although the calculation may reach this value sooner than a chain length of 40. These odds are actually in addition to the regular odds of the Pokémon being shiny, although this doesn't make any noticeable difference. Poké Radar-exclusive species It is possible to encounter Pokémon only via using the Poké Radar. More accurately, there are certain possible encounters that are only available to encounters triggered by using the Poké Radar - they may be of species that cannot be encountered normally, or at levels they are not normally found at. Only vigorously rustling grass has the potential to spawn the Radar-exclusive encounters. Shining rustling grass can also do this, but obviously that would be very rare. This only matters for the first encounter at the start of a chain - if you have a Radar-exclusive encounter, then all encounters in the chain will be the same regardless of the kind of rustling. There is an array in the script section Settings which contains the details of all Poké Radar-exclusive encounters: POKERADAREXCLUSIVES = [ 20, :STARLY, 12, 15, 10, :STANTLER, 14, 20, :BUTTERFREE, 15, 18, 20, :BEEDRILL, 15, 18 ] Each line is a specific encounter. The first number is a map ID. This is the map on which this encounter is available. Multiple encounters can be defined for the same map. The second number is a probability. This is the percentage chance that this encounter will be used. If no Radar-exclusive encounter is used, then a regular encounter will be randomly chosen as normal. The rest of the information is a species and either one or two levels (if two, they dictate a range of levels). This is the same as in the PBS file "encounters.txt".